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“Is Detective McCreadie the braw one with the whiskers?” Braw means handsome. While she has a thick brogue, there’s also a careful choice of words that suggests an above-average education.
“He is, and I am a poor substitute, I know.”
She laughs at that, a soft and genuine laugh. I serve the tea and then sit.
“Is that sugar?” she says, pointing at the tiny pot.
I pass it to her, and she stirs in three spoonfuls and then sips it, sighing with pleasure.
“Perhaps I will not mind going to prison after all,” she says. “My eldest is old enough to care for the wee ones a day or two.”
“Having been in a prison cell, I don’t think there’s sugar,” I say. “Possibly tea, but I certainly wouldn’t drink it.”
“You do not look the sort of lass who ends up in prison.”
“It was a single night, for a mistake.” I sip my own tea. “As I suspect this is also a mistake.”
“It is. The clothing is mine.”
“Hmm.” Another sip. “Bad enough your husband left you for another woman. To take your clothing, too?”
“Oh, it is only the clothing that I miss.”
I laugh under my breath. “Still, it would grate something terrible, knowing his new wife is wearing your dresses.”
She sets down her teacup. “Let me settle a misunderstanding, which I hope you can pass along to the handsome Detective McCreadie. I bear mysuccessor no ill will. In fact, I pity her. My burden has been shifted to her shoulders, and the lass deserves better.”
“Your burden being your late husband.”
“My latesupposedhusband, yes. I fear you will find my story falls far short of the melodrama one might expect from my tale of woe. Cast off for a younger woman. Discovering I was never wed, and my children are bastards, their wretched father refusing to pay a hap’ney for their care, because how does he truly know they are his, when I am so wanton as to bear children out of wedlock?”
“Yourchildrenare not the bastards,” I mutter.
She smiles thinly. “I have heard that. I have said that, too. When he first left, I was as frantic as one might imagine. But then a miracle occurred. Once I was left in charge of the family purse, even without his contributions it grew fatter. It is amazing how much money a family can save when they are not also supporting a husband’s mistress. My children and I are fine, miss. Better without him than we’d been with him. It is only the shame we must escape, and I intend to do so once I have the money saved to join my sister’s family in the country. She has a little empty cottage on her farm, and while she is offering for free, I want to be able to pay proper rent, and it may take time to settle on new work there.”
“I am glad you are finding your way, ma’am, and free of your husband. I do not blame the new Mrs. Burns for what she did to escape such a man.”
I try not to hold my breath awaiting the response. I don’t need to. It comes quickly.
“She did no such thing,” Clara says, in a tone more exasperated than offended. “Only a fool poisons her husband these days and thinks to get away with it. The moment a man falls ill with a stomach complaint, all eyes fall on his wife. The girl is no fool. Foolishto have wed him, but I did the same at her age, and I would like to think I was not a fool—only a girl with an empty place in her heart that a clever tongue could fill.”
“You do not think she killed him?”
“I know she did not.”
“Because you have spoken to her. You know where she is. You were taking that clothing to her.”
She flinches and then quickly sips her tea before giving a thin smile. “That would be a poor tale, would it not? The abandoned wife aiding the lass who stole her husband? It is a very unsatisfying sort of melodrama.”
I shrug. “Two women recognizing they have both fallen prey to the same man? The first wife recognizing thatheis the villain rather than the other woman? That is the best sort of story.”
“I am not harboring my husband’s former mistress.”
No, just stealing clothing that McCreadie says would be several sizes too large for you, the second Mrs. Burns being a plump and buxom young woman.
I sip my own tea. “That is unfortunate. If you were, I would ask you to take a message to her. There is a certain pudding we found in the icebox that she made for him—”
She cuts me off with a sharp laugh. “Madefor him? Did he actually believe such a tale? The girl toasts bread into charcoal.”
